


Is It Okay If I Fall In Love With You?

by orangeflesh (eajwrites)



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Jaebri, Jaehyungparkian, M/M, jhpian, nerd!jae, or that was how it was supposed to be in their trilogy mv, outcast/delinquent!brian, parkian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:14:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25521172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eajwrites/pseuds/orangeflesh
Summary: A straight A+ student Jae, meets Brian, the outcast delinquent of their class who just transferred a few months ago. At first, Jae didn't really bother trying to know the guy since it was pretty difficult to talk to him with his unapproachable aura but something happened and that made them a little bit interested in each other.
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K/Park Jaehyung | Jae
Comments: 14
Kudos: 100





	1. Fascinating Encounter

Jae halted and adjusted his glasses before knocking thrice on the door of his teacher’s office while balancing a stack of papers on his left hand.

“Come in,” said a gruff male’s voice from the inside. 

Jae bit his lower lip. His teacher sounded mad. 

Wondering how he somehow angered his teacher with his knocks (did he disturb his sleep?), he turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open before letting himself in with his head lowered. 

“Oh, so it’s you, Jae. What brings you here?” Contradictory to his previous tone, the teacher greeted Jae with endearment.

Hearing the abrupt change of his English teacher’s attitude, Jae finally raised his head and offered a coy smile. On the sideline, he noticed a familiar face sitting silently in front of the teacher’s table. His classmate. Brian Kang. Now he had an idea about his teacher’s sour mood earlier. 

The lower half of Brian’s back rested on the surface where his ass should be sat. And in his position; arms slacked, hands inside his pockets and long legs extended, he was more like lying down on the chair rather than sitting on it. And even after Jae’s arrival, his eyes continued staring on the floor, unbothered. Like Jae was just another dust in the air he couldn’t care less about.

“Excuse me, sir. I brought the class’ essays from this morning,” Jae answered as he raised the pile of papers before closing the door behind him.

“Oh yes, thank you. Can you please arrange them alphabetically for me? And once you’re done, just place them there,” the middle-aged man gestured towards the cabinet on Jae’s left. “Just find a clean empty spot.” 

Jae nodded and proceeded towards his left where the said cabinet stood.

“Mr. Kang,” said the teacher towards the other boy in the room. “This is not the first time you submitted a blank answer sheet. Tell me exactly how you managed not to know a single thing about our topic.” The teacher sounded tired once again.

Out of curiosity, Jae scanned the papers he was compiling to see if the guy submitted his assignment, and sure enough, the name Brian Kang didn’t show up. 

Brian Kang was a transferee that came in the middle of spring. And that’s about all the information Jae knew about him, for Brian never mingled with other students. Aside from his sharp features—fox eyes, sharp nose, taut lips, and multiple piercings, he always had his earphones on except during classes that’s why no one could approach him. And that included Jae.

He was about to continue arranging the papers, but then he spotted something strange—one piece of paper didn’t match the size of the others. When he pulled it out, it was actually a torn page from a book. He didn’t notice it before because white space occupied a relatively good portion of the page. 

He studied the paper—neat handwriting and perfect English words. Such eloquence, he recognized it right away. It was that paper. Jae particularly remembered picking it up from a vacant seat near the window. Now that he thought about it, that place was Brian’s usual spot. The paper was lying on the desk so he thought it was another homework since English words were scribbled all over the page, but at a closer inspection, the words didn’t form an essay at all. 

After making sure that nobody was paying him any attention, Jae folded the paper before pocketing it and continued his work.

“Sorry teach, I really didn’t know the answers.” Brian’s nonchalant voice reverberated in the relatively quiet room.

Their teacher groaned in frustration, then a crisp sound of papers hitting the wooden table followed.

Jae wanted to groan too. He’s almost finished with organizing the papers. But how could he excuse himself in this situation? When could he insert his word of exit?

“As for Jae,” the teacher changed his tone again. 

_Uh oh. He’s involved now?_

His teacher continued, “You got a perfect score, Jae. Excellent job as always.”

Jae turned around and offered a slight smile like he wasn’t just grumbling seconds ago. He then performed his well-practiced signature response to these kinds of situations: head down, fingers busy adjusting his fake eyeglasses (that were never out of place to begin with), before mumbling a soft “Thank you.”

Their teacher was about to say more when his phone rang. “I’m taking this call. Stay here,” he quickly said to no one in particular before walking outside. 

“What a load of bull,” Jae murmured absentmindedly, thinking how tired he was with all these best-student-bullshits. By the time he realized he wasn’t alone inside the room, Brian Kang was already staring at him wide-eyed, hand holding his earphones in the air, frozen.

And for the first time, Jae saw an unfamiliar expression on Brian’s face. It’s _fascination_. No doubt about it. His lips that tugged upwards on one side said it all.

Brian let his earphones drop around his neck. “So this is what the perfect model student really is in reality, huh,” he scoffed and Jae almost lost his cool for a second.

But Jae knew better than to panic. Okay, the straight A’s Jae Park fucked up, but so what? It wasn’t like it’s the first time that someone discovered his genuine nature.

He removed his glasses and placed it on top of the teacher’s desk before sitting down on the chair opposite Brian. And from his pocket, he pulled out the folded paper he placed there earlier and started reading, _“You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars are laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.“_

Seemingly unflustered, Brian raised an eyebrow. “An excerpt from The Little Prince, yeah. So what?”

“So what?” Jae mocked. “I took this from your table this morning thinking this was your essay. To think that a guy who flunked English is actually fluent up to this degree, it never even crossed my mind for a split second.”

Brian shrugged his shoulders. “No big deal. I just copied.” 

Jae’s smile widened. “Yeah?” he said before he continued reading from the paper again. 

_“I haven’t slept at all in days  
it’s been so long since we’ve talked  
and I have been here many times  
I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.“_

That erased the smirk from Brian’s face. He snatched the paper away from Jae’s hold. “This is an invasion of privacy,” he hissed.

Jae just held his hands in the air, smirking. He had just stood up and put on his eyeglasses again when their teacher came back.

“Jae, you’re still here?” he asked once he saw Jae still standing near the cabinet, awkwardly putting his weight on one foot then to the other, following a silent rhythm.

Brian’s uncaring expression also resurfaced. He had already kept the paper inside his pocket, exactly one second before their teacher came marching in.

Jae scratched the back of his head, “I’m sorry, sir. I thought you also wanted me to stay. I’ll be on my way now.”

“Oh no. My bad. It’s me who should be sorry. Be careful on your way home.”

“It’s alright sir. Thank you,” Jae said to his teacher before turning towards the other boy in the room, “See you tomorrow in class, Brian.”

If looks could drill holes, with the intensity that Brian was glaring at him, Jae would be a tattered rag doll by now. And it was the funniest thing Jae encountered in this entire week of boring school life. To contain his laughter, he bit his bottom lip. But if his teacher saw the twinkle in his eyes, he would definitely wonder what was so funny. 

_Now this is what you call fascinating,_ Jae thought as he greeted the students he saw along the corridor, giving them curt nods and smiles like the friendly student that he wanted to portray he was.


	2. Chapter 2

Brian plugged his earphones as soon as he left his teacher’s office. He knew he had it coming when he submitted a blank paper again, but he didn’t foresee that his teacher would nag him about it for two hours straight. If he knew, he would have written a word or two at the very least. 

And to make things worse, the Jae that everyone looked up to for being a perfect student was there. And opposite to everyone’s belief, he was actually a prick who didn’t know what the word privacy meant. 

Cursing inwardly, Brian crumpled the paper inside his pocket. The thought of Jae having already read the entire poem he wrote made him want to vaporize.

His phone vibrated and the name of his mother greeted him when he took the device out of his other pocket.

But before tapping the answer button, he took a deep breath and prayed that the issue about his poems never gets mentioned again.

_“I heard everything from your teacher. Why are you making things difficult again?”_

Papers rustled from the background. His mother was obviously still at work, but she already spoke with his English teacher. And now him. _Great._ “I am not. I just don’t like it here.”

_“You don’t? Look, I made you transfer schools because of the bullying you got from your previous one and now that I made sure that I can leave you to a teacher acquaintance, this is what you do. Seriously Brian, you should stop scribbling those stupid poems. Those are the only things that occupy your brain all the time, making no room for academics in there anymore.”_

Brian rolled his eyes. So much for praying. No matter how much he yearned for his mother’s attention, not getting it was so much better than his poems being called stupid. 

“Sorry mom. Gotta go. Gate is closing soon,” he said before ending the call. 

With his heart more heavy than it was before, he slid his phone inside his pocket and went downstairs. 

Deep inside, Brian understood his mother’s view as a parent. And the more he thought about how his mother might be right, the smaller he felt. What if one day, his already insignificant existence would disappear without a trace? Acting up and performing badly at school were some of his ways to get his mother’s attention, and they're somehow effective for the time being. No one could tell when his mother would eventually tire of dealing with his misconduct too. 

He was used to being misunderstood because nobody cared enough to listen, and if somebody did end up getting a glimpse of his thoughts, they turn into someone like Park Jae—a bully.

Pushing the thought to the back of his mind, he walked to the locker room with an unreadable expression. But when he saw that the door to his locker was ajar, his world stopped spinning. 

He was sure that he locked it that morning. 

Multiple scenes played inside his head (thanks to his classmates’ ingenious ideas of bullying back in his previous school) as he hurriedly opened it. 

His heart sank to his stomach when his eyes fell on a neatly placed piece of paper on top of his things. 

_‘I have your precious little notebook. Meet me at the rooftop. -Jae’_

A couple of shocked expressions turned towards Brian as he slammed his locker shut and stormed out of the room.

Brian sprinted towards the stairs on the south wing that led to the rooftop, all the while praying to the gods out there that Jae didn’t open his notebook yet. But shit, who was he kidding? He stayed for fucking two hours inside that hell hole while Jae had his notebook in his hands. If Jae hadn’t read the entire thing yet, he would be already thankful.

That notebook was his everything. When he was alone, it was the only thing that accompanied him. If there’s someone or rather something that understood him in this selfish world, it was his notebook. All of his thoughts and dreams were all poured in there. Without it, he might as well vanish.

When he reached the rooftop, his ears were ringing and he could feel his lungs being ripped apart. He felt like vomiting. But he needed to find Jae first.

He scanned the place but found no one. It was practically deserted. 

Brian closed his eyes tight in frustration and took deep breaths. 

He needed to get that notebook back no matter what.

But how?

What if Jae had already shredded it to pieces after getting tired of waiting for him?

“Pst.”

Brian looked up to where the voice came from. A giant foot and a familiar face of its owner met his gaze. Park Jaehyung. He was sitting on top of the concrete platform directly above the landing of the stairs Brian just came out of. No wonder he wasn’t able to see him right away. 

“So your earphones are just decorations. You can definitely hear while wearing them. Am I right? You’re just always pretending to be indifferent when you’re actually observing everyone,” Jae said after letting out a puff of smoke.

Smoke.

Brian’s eyes traveled towards Jae’s hand where he held a lit cigarette in between his thumb and index finger.

“Smoking inside the school premises is prohibited.”

Jae lightly chuckled before jabbing the lit end of the cigarette stick on the surface he was sitting on and threw it in front of Brian. “There. Happy now?”

Brian pulled out his earphones and threw Jae a death glare. “Not the least bit. I just didn’t want to get secondhand smoke. Anyway, you comment about my earphones, yet you wear eyeglasses in class when you don’t even need them,” Brian commented. Then he remembered what he came there for. “Give me back my notebook.”

Jae raised the said notebook in the air. “Did you write these?” Jae asked.

Brian clenched his jaws. “That’s none of your business. Now give it back while I’m still asking nicely.”

Jae stared at him for a while before breaking into a feat of laughter. “You’re funny, Bri.”

Ready to fight with his life on the line, Brian walked around the elevated platform to find something to climb on. He despised violence, but if biting someone’s ears off would enable him to get back his notebook, he’s down with it.

“Hey, I’m going down in a minute and I’m giving you back your notebook so come back here.”

Brian walked back to where he stood earlier. When he looked up, Jae was already holding a guitar. “Give it back to me now.”

“I will give it back but listen to this first.”

Brian was about to find something to use as a ladder to get up where Jae sat when a thick melody from the guitar filled his ears accompanied by the sweetest voice he heard in his entire life. He got glued on the spot where he stood. He looked up at Jae. The boy had his eyes closed while singing. At that moment, Brian could swear he saw petals raining down on him. And the more he listened, the more familiar the lyrics became. 

Jae was singing a verse from one of his poems in the notebook.

_“I am suffocating and  
I am alone in a deep tunnel  
That swallows the light  
In my road ahead  
That is unseen and pitch black  
I see nothing  
I felt nothing either”_

With a smile still playing on his lips, Jae stopped singing and opened his eyes, “Well?” 

To be honest, Brian wasn’t really concerned that his poems would be discovered and be seen by the world. What he was the most afraid of was that someone might make fun of them or that they would say that they were bad. 

But Jae did none of those. Instead, he put melody on Brian’s poems and even sang it beautifully, breathing them into life. He knew Jae didn’t do it to intentionally make him feel good, but he couldn’t help but feel grateful towards the boy he was loathing just minutes ago.

Brian opened his mouth to say something a bit friendlier (well, it wouldn’t hurt to praise Jae, but he’s still a jerk who didn’t respect privacy so) but he got cut off by a female’s voice.

“What are you doing here, Brian? Rooftop is off-limits. I think you know that already.”

The newly arrived person was no other than the head of the student discipline committee. She had her arms across her chest as she glowered at Brian from head to toe. When her eyes reached his feet, they widened by a fraction. 

Brian watched silently as she bent forward to pick up something from the ground near Brian’s foot. 

“Violating two school rules in a day, aren’t we? Smoking on top of staying at the rooftop late in the afternoon? The least punishment you’ll get for these is two weeks' suspension,” she smirked and raised the fresh cigarette butt.

“That’s not mine, but whatever,” Brian answered. “Let’s go and discuss this somewhere else. Staying here is prohibited, right?”

“Hey.”

They looked up and watched Jae hop down from where he’d been sitting.

Surprised by the sudden appearance of the school’s top student, the girl immediately placed the blame on Brian. “Why are you here, Jae? Did Brian make you come here?”

Jae laughed. “Funny how you guessed what happened. But you see, you reversed the roles. I was the one who called him here and as for that cigarette butt you’re holding, that’s mine.”

The girl’s brows met in the middle. “Did he also blackmail you into saying this lie?”

Jae’s in a bad situation. His reputation of being the perfect student would get tarnished for sure. But if it was Brian who took the blame, nothing would really change. 

Brian was about to admit all of these accusations when Jae pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and lit a stick in front of them.

The girl’s eyes looked like they would pop out of their sockets when Jae exhaled a cloud of smoke on her face before walking past her.

Long slender fingers gripped Brian’s wrist and before he knew it, Jae was already dragging him. They quickly descended the stairs as if they could not hear the girl shouting at them to stop. When she ran after them, the two looked at each other and grinned before sprinting for the gates hand in hand.

Upon reaching a relatively empty river bank, Jae threw his guitar on the grass before pulling Brian down with him. They laid side by side, chests heaving up and down. For a minute, nobody said a word. Both were busy catching up their breaths. Only the sound of the river and the traffic resonated in their ears. 

Jae was the first to break the silence. “Hey. Can I read the rest of your poems?”

Brian turned his head towards Jae. “You mean, you haven’t yet?”

Jae shook his head. “At first I wanted to wait for you to arrive but you took too long so I opened the first few pages.”

“Oh. So you still have some decency left in you, huh.” Brian commented. But he didn’t mean them anymore. 

Letting the remark pass, Jae asked again, “So, can I read? I really want to read them.”

“Okay but in one condition,” Brian replied.

“What condition?”

Brian grinned. “Is it okay if I fall in love with you?”

Jae let out a heartfelt laughter. “What’s with that?”

Brian shrugged before placing his hands under his head. “You seem to be the type of person that I'll like more, the better I get to know. I’m just making sure you won’t hate me for it.” He didn’t know where his courage came from, but Jae just had that effect on him.

“Okay deal but, is it okay if I fall in love with you too?” Jae answered and Brian could swear that his already rampaging heartbeat spiked up even more.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twt @selenophileeaj


End file.
